Either this means a big update is just around the corner or that FCPX has moved into stasis mode. If the latter, then Apple feels it's largely feature-complete and all the engineers have moved over to making a car OS.

[Oliver Peters]"Either this means a big update is just around the corner or that FCPX has moved into stasis mode. If the latter, then Apple feels it's largely feature-complete and all the engineers have moved over to making a car OS.
"

I think the next update will tell us a lot. Logic Pro development seems to be continuing at a pace, that certainly hasn't been put into stasis mode.

[Steve Connor]"Logic Pro development seems to be continuing at a pace, that certainly hasn't been put into stasis mode."

Agreed. It's a coin toss at the moment with FCPX. OTOH, the SAN changes are no small feat. That hits at a hit-end market, but probably benefits everyone. Since FCPX is not a big marketing focus for Apple, it does allow them to add some less sexy, but very important, features.

I think with the Roles-mixer patents that have been showing up, and some hearsay that people within Apple 'realise that Audio should be better in FCPX', I'm guessing that it's a stop-gop solution to a big release.
I am, like a lot of us, sometimes dissapointed with the pace of development with FCPX.
On the other hand, although I can be jealous of the pace that Adobe seems to have with Premiere Pro, I still love the way X works a lot better, I love cutting in it a lot more, and although this isn't empirical, a lot of people seem to agree that overall stability with X (at this point) seems better than PPro.

I'm also guessing that IF Apple gets to putting a Roles based mixer in FCPX, we will have to agree that it's a hard thing to have figured out in a trackless timeline, but if done well, in my humble opinion, could be a proof that trackless gets you a lot of advantages above a tracked timeline, and not a lot of disadvantages.

Now seriously. We have tested the new release on quite a big X-SAN and on a fast modern collaboration system (ShareStation Enterprise). In our experience, opening Libraries on the SAN has improved considerably. We also noticed improved waveform generation speed on very long files on both systems. So I think we should see this as a bug fix and performance update, preceding a feature update that will probably be tied to El Capitan.

We also should be aware of the fact that, in any software development setup, different people can be working on totally different aspects of the application at the same time. It is highly probable that, while this bug fix update was being prepared by a small part of the team, others have already been working on new features for some time. And these features will be released on a later date. Whenever that is, I really would encourage them not to hastily add new features just for the sake of it. We all have witnessed to what this can lead...

FCP X isn't feature-complete yet, far from. And I'm pretty sure that the FCP X product management isn't thinking any differently. At this time, performance and stability are very important selling-points for FCP X. I can only hope they will keep concentrating on these points, while adding new features that will be useful for a majority of their user base. I absolutely endorse leaving the development of specialized features to third-party developers. This adds special functionality for those who really need it, without bloating the code and sacrificing overall performance or stability.

For a tool probably used by 2 million editors now, no matter what apple does its never going to be enough for some observers and even players.

As much as I want bold upgrades - I DO NOT want to risk what I have right now - a dependable go-to tool that hasn't let me down in many, many months. I fully expect that after my Tues/Wed shoot - I'll have a database of filtered selects and favorites and ALL the crap from those 2 shooting days rejected when I touch down on Wed night.

I love added features. But right now - with lots of work in the queue - and LOTs of pulls on my time, dependability beats added features.

YMMV

Totally bummed I'll be shooting during the Virtual Users Group Webcast. Dang it!

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Absolutely! When money is on the line - any software that forgets its manners and trespasses on your focus and tranquility is (in the moment) being a bad neighbor!

Did I mention that using X is like living next door to a friendly nobel prize-winning supermodel that bakes and shares cookies? (Feeling like I've let the group down on wild pro-X hyperbole lately - and just trying to meet everyone's expectations!)

Carry on.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

I'd like Apple to CONTINUE the innovation they started when they released FCPX, I want them to go further down the path of redefining what an NLE is, I don't want them to add "old" features back in, I want new exciting features and if that's whining then so be it.

[Oliver Peters]"Only if that car is slipping and sliding to north :)
"

My Swiftcam gimbal did that. Until I read the manual and learned how to use it.

Who'd a thunk THAT would help!

; )

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

I see nothing unusual, let alone doom-and-gloomy about the update (yes, especially because of the SAN improvements alone) or the cycle. To date the updates have always been between 3-4 months apart, as well as every 3rd or 4th update being of a larger scale.

And although I'm one of those many that never even used the mixer (beyond maybe the master bus or for training purposes) when he had one in FCP 7 or elsewhere, if the mixer proposed in the infamous patent comes to fruition as described... wow. THAT I would definitely want (and use) sooner than later! And if for no other reason than to shut certain people up on the subject.

[Robin S. Kurz]"All of which (plus much much more) I have with Logic, should I (or the guy doing my audio) feel the need. But then I've never considered my NLE to be a DAW. There's an app for that..."

This is always a very subjective issue - what belongs in the NLE vs what should be done in a third party Ap. this goes for color correction, audio mix, and compositing. Further it goes to the nature of the exchange relationship between the NLE and other APs - is XML, AAF or OMF hand-off good enough, do you have to "freeze" the edit before the exchange, how closely do the various aps work with each other.

My own preferences are to do as much as possible in the NLE - I want to see and hear things evolving in the timeline as I work - the quality of the audio effects my visual choices, the visuals effect my audio and content choices - even if some or even much of what I am doing will eventually be replaced.

If I am going to use external apps to do some of the heavy lifting I want the exchange to be as seamless and as bi-directional as possible - which is why I have such a problem with the way Motion now integrates with FCPX, which is a shame because I much preferred it to working with AE.

It's what I commonly call "locked picture", yes. Goes for both sound and color btw. But that may just be a weird workflow quirk of mine.

[Herb Sevush]"which is why I have such a problem with the way Motion now integrates with FCPX"

Aside from maybe not being able to send a clip directly from the FCP timeline, the integration is seamless. In very many ways even FAR better than what PPro and AE have (cue the subject of speed, not to mention editability), let alone what was possible in 7. But yeah... YMMV, as they say.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Aside from maybe not being able to send a clip directly from the FCP timeline, the integration is seamless."

That's like saying apart from being a one way street it's just like a two way street - you know, it has pavement and cars driving on it. And inserting the word "maybe" in the middle doesn't make the sentence any less ridiculous.

[Robin S. Kurz]"You're clearly not the least bit up to speed on the integration of Motion in FCP. But that's okay... speaking of ridiculous."

OK, so show me the error of my ways. From within FCPX can you select a section of your timeline and send those clips to Motion, with their in and outpoints preserved, for further compositing? that is a requirement for a bi-directional work flow, something that has been available in many NLE's for over 15 years.

[Herb Sevush]"OK, so show me the error of my ways. From within FCPX can you select a section of your timeline and send those clips to Motion, with their in and outpoints preserved, for further compositing? that is a requirement for a bi-directional work flow, something that has been available in many NLE's for over 15 years.
"

Of course you can't Herb and many of us would rather you could, there is some excellent integration in other ways but sadly it lacks this very basic ability which is odd as the other integration seems to be much more complex

[Steve Connor]"[Herb Sevush] "OK, so show me the error of my ways. From within FCPX can you select a section of your timeline and send those clips to Motion, with their in and outpoints preserved, for further compositing? that is a requirement for a bi-directional work flow, something that has been available in many NLE's for over 15 years.
"

Of course you can't Herb and many of us would rather you could, there is some excellent integration in other ways but sadly it lacks this very basic ability which is odd as the other integration seems to be much more complex"

I remember taking some opinion survey a couple of years ago and I told them they need to bring back "Send To Motion", looks like they did not get the memo. Adobe does have Dynamic Link, so why can't Apple have something similar? Bangs head against wall in disbelief and despair. Ouch!

[Herb Sevush]"OK, so show me the error of my ways. From within FCPX can you select a section of your timeline and send those clips to Motion, with their in and outpoints preserved,"

He will correct me if I'm wrong Herb, but an example of what Robin is saying would be........

You have an interview in your timeline. You use a motion template lower third. That lower third needs to be changed in someway (say making it longer). You can open that lower third template in motion from X and change it in Motion and now you have the effect ready for you in X

You wouldn't "need" to send the whole interview over to Motion. You are sending the template over there.

I like that it can do that and I have used it that way many times.

I don't "want" to have to send the whole section over to Motion while ding this. I want to send the template over there. It's "faster"

[Steve Connor]"[Tony West] "I don't "want" to have to send the whole section over to Motion while ding this. I want to send the template over there. It's "faster""

Yep, Motion is now a great titling tool within FCPX and perhaps for many that's all the interaction it needs"

Actually... and this really is an honest question as I never used Motion in FCP Old... why would you want to send something to Motion? Like, what things would you (meaning anybody here) be wanting to do?

-------------------------------------------------------------

~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~"It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools."~
~"The function you just attempted is not yet implemented"~

[Charlie Austin]"Actually... and this really is an honest question as I never used Motion in FCP Old... why would you want to send something to Motion? Like, what things would you (meaning anybody here) be wanting to do?
"

I tee up a lot of sequences for compositing in editing. This can include green screen, or motion graphics, or paint/cleanup/rig removal. It is so much easier to get all the right timing and placing in the NLE, and then send that entire sequence over to something like Motion (I current use Ae because it's easier to get in to Ae than it is Motion from FCPX).

The compositing stages are much easier to do in an application that is built for it.

Since I like to stack the available media in the timeline, it's nice to be able to send an XML with everything timed out, rather than send a bunch of media to compositing with no timings in place.

[Tony West]"He will correct me if I'm wrong Herb, but an example of what Robin is saying would be........"

I know that Motion rigging works very well in that one direction, but what if you had a shot of a WS of a guy under an umbrella and you wanted to create artificial rain and that on a cut to a CU turns to snow. Motion has particle effects that can handle this very nicely, but you need the exact shots in place, cut points and all, to tweak the effect. How would you do that in X?

In FCP7, I would simply cut the shots, select them, hit "send to motion", create the effect, then return to FCP7 and "walla" it would be there. Then when I got notes back I could simply click that motion clip and the effect would open up in Motion for me to tweak to my hearts content. Return to FCP7 and the changes are in place. I do that now with Ppro and AE, 15 years ago I used to do that with edit* and Combustion.

That is a "bi-directional" relationship, or "round tripping" in the vernacular. Without it, how would you handle any compositing situation that was more complex than pre-defined CG templates?

[Tony West]"I would bring the WS shot and the CU into Motion to begin with and ad the rain on one and the snow on the other, then bring those into the X"

Yes, you could write the names of each clip down on a post it, then enter the in and out points on that same slip of paper. Then open Motion and manually set the project to the correct format and then go to properties and enter the correct duration, then find and import the 2 clips, set up their in and outpoints and place them on the correct layers and then create the effects. After that you can go to the export setup and make sure your exporting to the correct format and once exported go back to FCPX and import the clip.

I would also prefer not to do those extra steps you mentioned. I was saying "before" those shots hit the timeline in X
I would bring them into Motion "first"

Those effects on those shots would be the first thing that I did to the footage for that section.

I might be an oddball but here is my list

The first thing that I would like in Motion would be the "Skimmer" I don't like old school moving that playhead around after working in X
Send to Motion only helps me at the beginning and end. The "Skimmer" helps me the entire time I'm working on the shots. Put the "blank" Skimmer in there Apple!

Second, X has all these really cool backgrounds that I love to build Motion graphics over. I want all of those in Motion also. I don't want to have to export those out of X

Then third I would like Send to Motion, because as Jeremy said, sometimes my timing get's a little off in the timeline.

[Tony West]"I would also prefer not to do those extra steps you mentioned. I was saying "before" those shots hit the timeline in X. I would bring them into Motion "first""

Or simply hit ⌘⇧R with the timeline clip selected and make a Motion project from the clip from there. Done. Publish to FCP and switch back and forth at will with a simple right-click or ⌘Tab. So... I guess someone needs to explain that thing about "not two-way" again? But then actually using the products has been know to work wonders. :-D

[Tony West]"X has all these really cool backgrounds that I love to build Motion graphics over."

You realize of course, that all of those backgrounds are in fact Motion projects, right?

[Robin S. Kurz]"Or simply hit ⌘⇧R with the timeline clip selected and make a Motion project from the clip from there."

Does this preserve the in-out points and can this be done for multiple timeline clips being sent to one motion project, preserving their spatial relationship to each other? If so, then you are correct, you don't need a "send" feature.

The long-tooth crusade to add BACK features that used to be a compelling part of Apple's message: "It all works together seamlessly."

Except now, it doesn't.

This isn't some passive-aggressive harangue from a Apple-hater insisting that Apple act in some bizarre manner to suit my own unholy, nightmare perversions. This was an ACTUAL APPLE FEATURE.

Or is this too part of my perverted fever dream? The drugs have worked well, but they may not have worked miracles. Is it the tongue of a demon in my ear, licking the lascivious lie that Apple used to have products that worked really well together, and they work together less well now?

So I'm assuming a lot here. I'm assuming that I'm currently in a state of relative psychotropic equilibrium, and I'm assuming that I'm not being deceived by Old Scratch. Instead of "FCP Legend," should I be calling it "FCP Apple-Hating Schizophrenic's Drooling Rant?"

(Actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to call it that anyway.)

In any case, nobody has presented the advantage that Apple has introduced by REDUCING the degree of integration between its products in its new vision for how things are supposed to work in the best possible world, ie, Apple's.

My guess is that there's not one, but I've guessed wrong before. So I'll ask it as a question: what has Apple, or Apple's customers, gained from Apple making its products work less well together over time?

[Tim Wilson]"In any case, nobody has presented the advantage that Apple has introduced by REDUCING the degree of integration between its products in its new vision for how things are supposed to work in the best possible world, ie, Apple's."

I think they feel the "advantage" is saving time. I think they think it takes more time to leave one program to go to another. I think they want you to do almost everything inside X

They want you to grade in there, instead of going to another program. Correct your audio in there. After rigging go to Motion a little less because of all the templates you built are waiting for you in X.

I think that's why they have been slow to add "send to Motion" because that kind of goes against the theme.

I can't remember who I had the discussion with, but during the Creative Summit in Cupertino last year, I remember a conversation where the "outside IN" verses "Inside OUT" theory was discussed.

Basically X being seen by Apple as the single focus of your workflow with much of the capabilities of programs like Motion and Compressor already inside the main NLE which can be viewed as your central work hub. Rather than a design where you are EXPECTED to leave the NLE in order to do anything beyond the basics. The "many co-equal" programs with no hub seems to fit the ADOBE model with a wide array of Standalone programs that exist to run separately, AE, Prelude, Audition, etc, etc, - separate and distinct from the NLE. Each with their own look, feel, and learning curve. They all share, but you are expected to master multiple separate programs to get your work done.

In X, most of ones "daily array" of tools is expected to live permanently directly inside the program, itself - with many, many editors successfully producing work without ever needing to go outside of it.

Basically, in X there's no need for Prelude, for example, because that's built in - far less need for Audition, because of all access to the Logic code already in X - and AE becomes less critical, since there is a major subset of Motion already accessible inside X itself - and so on.

The Inside Out verses Outside In thing is an Interesting way to look at it, anyway.

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[Bill Davis]"The Inside Out verses Outside In thing is an Interesting way to look at it, anyway."

I wouldn't consider the specialist vs generalist balancing act by NLEs anything new though. For example, I think that PPro and FCP (both Legend and X) seem to have always existed in the realm of NLEs that had 'good enough' compositing, audio mixing, etc., to meet the needs of many editors. As opposed to Avid which sitll seems more weighted in the 'offline' world and Resolve and Smoke which are trying to expand beyond being online/finishing tools.

Apple obviously ditched its suite concept when it launched X (which makes sense given X's primary demographic) but on the flip side it would be nuts for Adobe not to try to leverage connectivity between its major apps (it's not like AE or PS is going to get killed off like Apple Color or DVD SP). With that being said, Adobe is still incorporating features from AE and Speed Grade into PPro so they are simultaneously allowing you to do more inside PPro while also increasing the connectivity it has with other Adobe applications. A caveat to what I just being that, AFAIK, there were no improvements with connectivity between PPro and SG in the 2015 version which, coupled with the enhanced color grading features added to PPro 2015, suggests that the continued development/existence of SG might be up in the air (as I've stated in other threads, it's got to be exceedingly difficult for SG to gain traction when Resolve is free and already so well established).

Of course too much vs too little functionality changes on a user by user basis and that's the difficult part of software makers. Too many features and some users will complain about bloat and feature creep and too few features and some users will complain that the software isn't useful enough.

[Bill Davis]"Rather than a design where you are EXPECTED to leave the NLE in order to do anything beyond the basics. The "many co-equal" programs with no hub seems to fit the ADOBE model with a wide array of Standalone programs that exist to run separately, AE, Prelude, Audition, etc, etc, - separate and distinct from the NLE. Each with their own look, feel, and learning curve. "

Not true at all, Adobe are building powerful tools INTO PPro itself, Lumetri Colour is fantastic, a lot of the AE filters are in PPro and the keyframe editing in PPro when you are compositing is excellent. Plus the audio tools, including two mixers, mean there is also less reason to leave PPro. But of course if you you DO need to these there is proper roundtrip between the Adobe Apps.

Which, again, they in fact haven't. They've taken out one command and added exponentially more functionality and tighter integration overall. To deduct that just because they removed a single command, that somehow the entire integration is sub-par, I'm guessing can only be attributed to lack of practical experience. Re-introducing the send would merely make it that much more superior, not equal to what legacy FCP had in comparison.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Why should you even care? You don't even USE either of them, let alone together"

I care because I'm curious about the tools of my trade. I care about Avid, Lightworks, Vegas, Edius, and Resolve, about PC workstations and Radeon graphics cards, about 7 to X and X to 7, about SAN networks and video over IP ... and I don't use any of them at the moment. I'm curious because my working environment might change and I like to stay informed.

So when many FCPX users lament the fact that their is no "send to motion" and you claim that there is an effective workaround, I'm curious about the contradiction.

However now that Michael Hancock has explained the situation I see that their is no contradiction.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Ah yes. As always. Unless of course, this time, you'd care to quote the passage where I said that? Spoiler: of course not. You can't."

I don't understand. This whole time, while it seemed like you were telling Herb he doesn't understand FCPX/Motion integration, you were actually agreeing that there is no effective workaround for the lack of "Send to Motion" in a compositing context?

[Walter Soyka]"you were actually agreeing that there is no effective workaround for the lack of "Send to Motion" in a compositing context?"

Erm... where exactly did I do either i.e. do more than acknowledge the fact?

[Robin S. Kurz]"Aside from not being able to send a clip directly from the FCP timeline…"

Whether the various options described are "effective" for others is not actually for me to decide. But apparently it's not a huge issue with actual users from what I'm reading, no. Go figger. :)

As much as I will welcome a sending option as much as anyone once it comes, it is far from the ultimate defining aspect of Motion's current integration with X. Assuming one is even familiar with it and doesn't just want it to be for the mere sake of argument. Again: it is exponentially tighter and more powerfully integrated with X than it ever was with 7. With or without send. But if SEND is all that matters to you, ah well... there are options. One of them being the app "SendtoMotion" by the way, if that should strike you as more "effective".

[Robin S. Kurz]"Unless of course, this time, you'd care to quote the passage where I said that? Spoiler: of course not. You can't."

Well there was this --

[Robin S. Kurz]"Or simply hit ⌘⇧R with the timeline clip selected and make a Motion project from the clip from there. Done. Publish to FCP and switch back and forth at will with a simple right-click or ⌘Tab. So... I guess someone needs to explain that thing about "not two-way" again? But then actually using the products has been know to work wonders."

Since I had already defined "send to motion" as a two-way, or bi-directional process, this implied that there is an equivalent to a "send feature."

Oh heck. I go out of state to shoot and the locals start the old squabbles again.

Herb, this is 5 years in and you still seem to be working SO hard to poke holes in a system you'll never adopt. Why? Everyone I know who works at a high level in FCP X - in film, television, documentary, sports, animation, commercials, corporate - whatever (and I know a LOT of X editors worldwide now) NONE of them sit around and grouse about not having the same "send to motion" capabilities they did in Legacy. If you bring it up, they might respond "oh. Yeah, there's that." Before we move on to something else.

Herb, I get that it's one of the central focus pillars of your current workflow - but if you ever learned X (I know, fat chance) it might surprise you how many of the processes you count on today to drive your editing efficiency and success - fade as they are replaced by other more mission critical concepts.

Tony and Robin and me and quite a few others who have earned deep knowledge in X all used to enjoy "send to motion" in its traditional form - but notice how few of us who are actually fully X literate - find what I think Tim referred to as this particular "feature downgrade" to be more critical to our editing happiness than others outside the X system seem to feel it should be.

So why aren't we X editors more focused on what others see as "missing?"

I'd speculate the reason has to do with how much more efficient the whole editorial process is for us now.

Sure we miss things we used to have. But not THAT much. Because to get those - until and unless X changes someday - we'd have to give up everything else in X and that's TOTALLY a non-starter.

I think of it this way. After 5 years in X - I'm enjoying editing MORE every year. Hopefully, you feel the same way about Premiere Pro. Life is hard. Tools SHOULD make it easier. X does that but not always the way you expect from the outside. I suspect some of this thread reflects that.

Happy Valentine's Day.

FWIW

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

Seems to me for going on 5 years now, that's a HUGE part of what I've continually dealt with right here.

That's not exactly in the "can't bear" category, is it.

I'd simply consider myself a glutton for punishment if it wasn't for the fact that so much of the "professional" criticism leveled at the program hadn't turned out to be so abysmally and woefully WRONG from day one.

It's amusing to me that the best the early haters can now do is say that "well, it wasn't at good then as it is now." Which is EXACTLY the truth about EVERY NLE. Period.

On day one, I had keywords, magnetism, the database, agile share, and dozens and dozens of other things that I found interesting and valuable.

That ostensible "kiddie" program vociferously tagged as "crippled and lame" by so many here is now cutting pro work on every continent. And a good number of the the fellow professionals I tried to interest in it, are STILL seeing it through mud colored glasses, trying VERY hard to find reasons to keep dismissing it.

Perfect for everyone? Nope. Perfect for no one? (the angst driven hue and cry in years 1-3) Even more Nope.

Fancy that.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]"It's amusing to me that the best the early haters can now do is say that "well, it wasn't at good then as it is now." Which is EXACTLY the truth about EVERY NLE. Period."

That totally misses the point and you know it. X was missing many features that had become 'common place' in pro NLEs when Apple launched it and that fact plus the simultaneous pulling of FCP 7 from store shelves led to much of the ire. If Apple wouldn't have pulled FCP 7 I think people would have been more forgiving of X's short comings or if Apple would have launched X with things like multicam, FCP Legend project importing, OMF, full quality baseband video out, Send to Motion (sorry, couldn't resist), etc., I think people would have been less pissed about FCP 7 getting yanked.

I guess another way to look at this would be if your choice of NLE today was capped at what was available in 2011 which one(s) would you choose? I'd take FCP 7 or whatever version of Avid was around at the time. Neither X nor PPro 5.5 were at points where I would pick them for day in and day out use.

Speaking of all NLEs getting better, in the earlier days of X's life many of its supports would say, "It'll get better" when people pointed out missing features and my response to those supporters was similar to yours here, Bill. Of course X is going to get better. And so will Avid and Premiere and Resolve, etc.,. To me the question never was "Will X get better?" because of course it will get better (whether or not it gets good enough for person X, Y or Z is another matter). The question I had was, "Will X get better fast enough to get people to consider it over NLEs like Avid or PPro which will also continue to get better (and which people might already be using or are more predisposed to use)"?

[Andrew Kimery]"That totally misses the point and you know it. X was missing many features that had become 'common place' in pro NLEs when Apple launched it"

AND at the same time it lost those things it SIMULTANEOUSLY had introduced brand new and EXTREMELY exciting concepts - that some of us with a bit of foresight - were quite happy to temporarily trade for what was lost.

Other editors did not see that. They saw ONLY a glass half empty. And IMO, bitched about it for far longer than was sensible.

Which is fine. Pessimism is long standing human tradition. As are feelings of abandonment, rejection, and loss. But the trick in life is that when you run into them - put them behind you as soon as you can.

Dwelling in them is something I find counter-productive. (Tho I"m certainly not the arbitrator of how long anyone needs to mourn anything.)

I simply find life more enjoyable from an optimistic outlook. Particularly when the result of my initial optimism is increased mastery of a system that keep giving me reasons to be more and more optimistic.

X for me, has been a happy spiral UP. NOT a sad spiral down. Big win to my thinking.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]"AND at the same time it lost those things it SIMULTANEOUSLY had introduced brand new and EXTREMELY exciting concepts - that some of us with a bit of foresight - were quite happy to temporarily trade for what was lost."

But if it lost what you needed then it doesn't really matter what it added. That goes directly to the comment of "well it got better over time" which means it gained back functionally that person X needed and if it would've launched w/said functionality the person probably would been more receptive to it. If the person had said that X sucks today as much as it did at launch *that* would've been a truly nonsensical, irrational statement.

In my case, when X launched I did a lot of multicam work, color grading for broadcast (meaning preview quality video-out wasn't acceptable) and I finished shows to tape. It didn't matter how cool I thought things like the metadata improvements or background process were because I needed multicam, baseband video out and finishing to tape for my day to day operation. X could've cooked me breakfast and driven me to work and it still wouldn't have mattered because it was missing functionality that was core to my workflow at the time. As X got better so did Avid and Premiere Pro (and Resolve) and if I had to guess I'd say that people that switched from FCP 7 to Avid or PPro are less likely to switch again so soon to another NLE.

I'm totally with you about the never ending bitching (I still run across people that complain about FCP Legend) which is why I typically ignore the perpetual bitchers.

[Andrew Kimery]"But if it lost what you needed then it doesn't really matter what it added."

It totally does if A) what you thought you needed, turned out NOT to actually be what you needed as much in the new system - or B) if your sense of "loss" was more emotional than practical.

I freely admit that I underestimated the HUGE sense of betrayal that many experienced NLE operators from the days before X was an option - FELT when it changed.

But a surprisingly large number I've talked to over the years, who HAVE made the change, have released what they used to think they wanted - in the face of new adds they now realize are actually MORE critical to productivity and ease of getting the same work done faster and easier.

And if an editor decided NOT to adopt it, for whatever reason including the ones you innumerate above, that's fine. But it's NOT fine to argue that it was somehow BROKEN at day one, when lots and lots of guys like me had success with it even in it's earliest incarnations.

You could, for a short while, say it was "broken" for an editor like yourself, who needed to do multi-cam every day - until it re-imagined multicam in 10.0.3. And then it wasn't. And provided those same editors a clever new, easier and more fluid way to do multicam than the industry had seen before. Did that stop the complaining? Hardly. The haters just moved on to some other aspect. Again, and again, and again.

Look, X editors aren't any better or smarter or more skilled than anyone else. The ONLY difference, is that we became X editors because we eventually accepted the program the way it ACTUALLY was - rather than focusing all our energy on to how it COMPARED to where we were coming from.

The earlier each of us did that, the better it seems to be for us now.

20/20 hindsight and all.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com - video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bill Davis]"It totally does if A) what you thought you needed, turned out NOT to actually be what you needed as much in the new system - or B) if your sense of "loss" was more emotional than practical. "

And if my aunt had a penis she'd be my uncle (or my transgender aunt). ;)

We are talking about similar yet different things (actual needs vs perceived needs). Both are certainly part of the 'problem' though actual needs need to be addressed externally (Apple adds the functionality, a third party adds the functional, the editing situation changes and a need is no longer a need, etc.,.) while perceived needs can be addressed by the individual (they learn there is a different way to skin the cat).

[Bill Davis]"And provided those same editors a clever new, easier and more fluid way to do multicam than the industry had seen before."

Did it? I know PPro and X's multicam functions similarly though I don't have the timeline for both memorized.

[Bill Davis]"The haters just moved on to some other aspect. Again, and again, and again. "

And they always will which is why I question why you keep trying to apply logic to an illogical situation and then wonder why you aren't getting the results you think you should be getting. For many people it boils down to the mindset of "it's *not* the product I've chosen to support therefore it most certainly is inferior to the product I *have* chosen to support." Just the other day on a FB group some asked about PPro vs Avid for an upcoming project and it didn't take long for the discussion to go the way of "Premiere sucks. It's unfit for professional use. Just go with Avid." The timing was unintentionally hilarious considering Deadpool and Hail, Caesar just game out (Deadpool is very entertaining BTW).

But it is what it is and, like the law of the conservation of energy, it's just going to morph into different things but it will never go away.

[Bill Davis]"The ONLY difference, is that we became X editors because we eventually accepted the program the way it ACTUALLY was - rather than focusing all our energy on to how it COMPARED to where we were coming from."

Same can be said for any NLE or piece of software for that matter. When I help move people to new NLEs my first piece of advice is to pretend you've never used an NLE before. If you bring previous NLE baggage with you it's just going to make the switch harder. I think learning your second NLE is harder than learning your first, but after you know two learning 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever is much easier.

[Bill Davis]"And if an editor decided NOT to adopt it, for whatever reason including the ones you innumerate above, that's fine. But it's NOT fine to argue that it was somehow BROKEN at day one, when lots and lots of guys like me had success with it even in it's earliest incarnations.
"

Why on earth is it NOT fine to argue this? FCPX when released was a best a beta and occasionally not even that! The fact that it was functional in some form doesn't mean that in many was it was 'broken" I started using it as early as you did and some of those early versions had real issues, there was a period where autosave randomly didn't save!

[Andrew Kimery]"I had to guess I'd say that people that switched from FCP 7 to Avid or PPro are less likely to switch again so soon to another NLE."

I have always thought that Apple really didn't care about "switchers". X was just too different to count on a bunch of old guys/gals (me being a member of the former) to learn a really new way to do things. If they got em, great! If not, well, they will be out of the business in a decade or so. It's the new breed of editors is what they were/are after. Just my humble opinion.

"[Andrew Kimery] "I had to guess I'd say that people that switched from FCP 7 to Avid or PPro are less likely to switch again so soon to another NLE.""

Except there are some houses that have gone FCP7 to PPro and then to MC because of issues with PPro in a shared environment. For all it's clunkiness, MC still rocks in large collaborative workflows. And yes, people have developed workarounds with FCPX and PPro, but it simply isn't the same.

[Oliver Peters]"Except there are some houses that have gone FCP7 to PPro and then to MC because of issues with PPro in a shared environment. For all it's clunkiness, MC still rocks in large collaborative workflows. And yes, people have developed workarounds with FCPX and PPro, but it simply isn't the same."

Certainly if you switch to a product that doesn't work well for you you'll most like switch again as soon as possible. My meaning was more along the lines of people that switched and were generally happy with where they ended up.

I agree that Apple obviously wasn't shooting for the demographic of 'dyed-in-the-wool, been editing 60hrs a week for the past 20 years' editors, but there are a lot of people that had to edit as part of their other duties and things like FCP Legend or Avid weren't designed with them in mind. When X came out I think many people in that situation were like "Oh, God thank you, this is so much better for me than what I have been using."

But on the flip side there are certainly features that have been added to X that are aim more towards the 'dyed-in-the-wool, been editing 60hrs a week for the past 20 years' editor than the person that just edits occasionally.

All in all, in true Apple fashion they do whatever the hell they want and if you like it you buy it and if you don't you don't.

[Tony West]"I couldn't select cameras on the fly as fast but I could sync faster."

If your talking about syncing by waveforms you could easily do that the moment Plural Eyes came out, which I used with FCP7 before X was born. But of course in that situation I actually could use FCP7 to see all five angles simultaneoulsy.

[Herb Sevush]"If your talking about syncing by waveforms you could easily do that the moment Plural Eyes came out, which I used with FCP7 before X was born. But of course in that situation I actually could use FCP7 to see all five angles simultaneoulsy."

I didn't have Plural Eyes back then.

But even if I had, I still would have moved to X because it was a 64 bit program and had other tools that 7 didn't have.

[Tony West]"Especially if 2 of those 5 cameras were Gopros with no TC. Or the other 3 were off by just a few frames
(off is off : )"

But there's always that one GoPro that's positioned in such away that it doesn't get usable audio and we're left trying to find an obvious visual landmark like a camera flash or car door slamming... production never runs out of new ways to make life harder in post. ;)

The trouble with syncing by waveforms is that a lot of cameras record audio with an offset and are natively out of sync. Especially DSLRs. A clapstick is still the most accurate, with common timecode coming in second.

[Oliver Peters]"The trouble with syncing by waveforms is that a lot of cameras record audio with an offset and are natively out of sync. Especially DSLRs. A clapstick is still the most accurate, with common timecode coming in second."

Isn't syncing via a clapstick still susceptible to offset as well? PPro can account for the offset (don't know about X). Even if the cameras don't all have the same offset it's simple enough to nudge a frame here or there since the offset on each camera should be consistent.

Like Tony w/X, I've found the syncing by waveforms in PPro to be a huge boon to my workflow. Doing mainly doc/unscripted work these days I rarely have a slate and keeping TC in sync is hit or miss depending on the crew (and that's assuming all the cameras can take TC). Many times I'll select an entire day's shoot (in excess of 100 clips) and let PPro do it's thing. There's some clean up to do but it's still way faster than doing it by hand in Avid or FCP Legend (which I've a lot of as well).

[Oliver Peters]"A clapstick is still the most accurate, with common timecode coming in second."

Ironically, a pretty high-profile pilot I was working on in L.A. a while back used jam-synched TC multicams with dual audio. More than 20 hrs. of footage. For some reason though, the audio had a latency problem of some sort, which led to a 2-3 frame offset. Parts were edited on an Avid (v6 I believe) and I was doing the rest on FCP X. The Avid guy was apparently pretty much screwed, since all he could use was TC for syncing. So whilst he was figuring out some sort of weird workaround (for literally a couple of days packed with phone calls), I was happily editing along with my waveform-based sync. :) So, either way, I certainly prefer it.

[Robin S. Kurz]" Parts were edited on an Avid (v6 I believe) and I was doing the rest on FCP X. The Avid guy was apparently pretty much screwed, since all he could use was TC for syncing. "

The Avid guy didn't know what he was going then. He could have manually synced, or figured out the offset and set up an auxiliary timecode column with the offset and used that to sync. He was screwed because he didn't know what he was doing - not because of the software.

Obviously, yes. Only with that amount of material that wasn't an option for him. Why? Best decision? No idea. He thought it was. And yes, IIRC the aux track ended up being the solution. Only that didn't spare him the massive amount of manual shifting around of bins and what not, nor the need for pre-rendering/transcoding the entire footage first, bin by bin, because the Avid (MP with Nitris, NextStor RAID and what not else) couldn't play the 2K Cinefrom material anywhere near realtime either... as opposed to me with FCP (though I ultimately did do most in Proxy, after it had finished automatically transcoding over night).

All I know is that he was anything but inexperienced (10 something years at Paramount) and didn't edit so much as one frame for almost three days.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Only that didn't spare him the massive amount of manual shifting around of bins and what not, nor the need for pre-rendering/transcoding the entire footage first, bin by bin, because the Avid (MP with Nitris, NextStor RAID and what not else) couldn't play the 2K Cinefrom material anywhere near realtime either... as opposed to me with FCP (though I ultimately did do most in Proxy, after it had finished automatically transcoding over night)."

Well to be fair, he was using software from 2011 that wasn't written to handle material like that. If he was running a newer version of Avid he would have had better performance and could have use the background transcoding and probably been working from day one.

If he had to go bin by bin to transcode then it's a workflow issue. He very easily could have dropped everything into one bin and set it to transcode overnight (like FCPX generating proxy files). Was this editor used to working with assistants that handled this type of stuff and didn't have them on this job? 10 years of editing doesn't mean he's well versed on the technical stuff, especially if he's more of a story editor.

[Michael Hancock]" Was this editor used to working with assistants that handled this type of stuff and didn't have them on this job? 10 years of editing doesn't mean he's well versed on the technical stuff, especially if he's more of a story editor."

I was going to ask the same question. 10yrs of editing doesn't prepare you to fix technical problems if you are used to having AEs do all the tech stuff so you can focus on editing. It's like going out in the morning and your car not starting. Just because you've been a licensed driver for 20 or 30yrs doesn't mean you have the skill set to trouble shoot and fix the problem.

The TC syncing situation being discussed is pretty much syncing 101 for any AE out there (especially those working in the unscripted world) and should've have turned into a problem at all.

With that being said, syncing by waveform (when it works) is fantastic and I'm glad Avid finally added that feature in the new version of MC.

[Michael Hancock]"10 years of editing doesn't mean he's well versed on the technical stuff, especially if he's more of a story editor."

Tell me about it!!!!!!

We recently worked on a movie where the editor was a really serious, incredibly talented Hollywood superstar with years and years of experience with some truly jaw-dropping credits to his name - who in this case was doing a favour for the wife of a very famous director and hence was working pretty much on his own, and having to be his own assistant.

Lovely guy and everything, but his lack of basic AVID knowledge was a real eye-opener, to say the least.

Those plucky assistants acting invisibly in the background make life so easy for the big guys - it's only when they're not around that you see how important they are.

[Tony West]"The thing is, "everybody" that edits for a living does multicam work from time to time. It wasn't anything unique and it wasn't something that you couldn't do in X"

The thing is for me it wasn't multicam from time to time though. It was multicam on nearly a daily basis. It was color grading for broadcast in the NLE or round tripping to Color on a nearly daily basis. It was laying off 30min shows to tape on at least a weekly basis (many times within hours of the east coast airtime). Look, I know you and Bill are used to dealing with annoying naysayers that like to stick their fingers in their ears and go "nah! nah! nah! nah! nah!" but I'm not that type of person, and you've got to believe me when I say I know my workflows better than you know my workflows (and X was just not a good fit for my workflow at that time).

Like I said before, there were new things that I liked in X, and would have improved our workflow, but in the early days it was missing too many features that were mission critical for us. The scales were not balanced out by the new features it had. I'll be super, exceedingly generous and say in the best of best case scenarios it would have been a wash. So why would we invest the time and money to R&D new workflow and retrain two dozen editors and producers on those new workflows if the best we are going to get is a wash?

Just to finish the story out, at this particular company (which was almost all FCP 7 though they did have a dwindling number of old-ish Avids) as soon as X launched they started researching Avid and PPro. X just had too many question marks around it and they needed to make a move sooner rather than later because FCP 7 was really showing its age for them. They eventually went with PPro. If X had launched with the features it 'got back' over the next 18 months or so it would have been in the running.

[Tony West]"I would just go along and blade the clips hitting 'v" and blading it was fast and simple. I would fine tune with the trim tool. Many of us did it."

This sounds similar to the less than stellar workaround we used for doing multicam in FCP before FCP had a multicam feature. In pretty much any NLE you can find a workaround to almost any situation but just because it can be done doesn't mean it's the best way to do it (or even a comparable way to do it).

Can I pound a screw in with a hammer? Can I drive a nail with the butt of a screw driver? Can I run a 100 yard dash in flip flops? The answer to all of those questions is "yes", but "can I" is the wrong question. The right question, is "what's the best tool I have for the job at hand"? If the choice is between hammering a nail with my forehead or with the butt of a screwdriver I'm going to chose the screwdriver. If the choice is between a screwdriver and hammer I'm going to chose the hammer (especially if my income depends on my ability to build structures using nails as fasteners).

[Andrew Kimery]"Look, I know you and Bill are used to dealing with annoying naysayers"

That doesn't bother me Andrew, I want the program to be better. They improved Multicam and it's even better.
I don't know if they added because of people slamming, but maybe.

I'm not really guessing your workflow, I'm saying on this specific feature it worked for some and didn't for others.

I used it for Multicam because I liked that it could sync faster than I could. I couldn't cut on the fly, but with cameras with no TC it could sync in a snap. That wouldn't change for me if I did those shoots every day.

I was on shoots when people were using clap boards. We all were. I had that clap board app on my phone.

I stopped using it.

It wasn't a work around. They built the ability to sync through sound into X on purpose.

You couldn't select on the fly as fast but you could sync faster. If anything it was a wash.
For me the edge went to syncing faster because that part wasn't as fun or creative.

When I explain why I do something it may seem like I'm saying "you should make the same choice"
I'm not. I'm saying why I made my choice you are saying why you made yours.

[Bill Davis]"I'd simply consider myself a glutton for punishment if it wasn't for the fact that so much of the "professional" criticism leveled at the program hadn't turned out to be so abysmally and woefully WRONG from day one."

+1
… and many insisting on staying that way to this day with such passion and vigor. Wow. And then actually turn to calling others "fanboy". :-D

[Bill Davis]"Herb, this is 5 years in and you still seem to be working SO hard to poke holes in a system you'll never adopt. Why?"

I'm not working hard at all. If you re-read my basic thoughts about the whole Motion thing it was a piece about assessing the balance between the idea of the "all-in-one" NLE vs the "studio of connected aps" approach.

At the end I simply stated that if I am going to use an extended ap I want the transfer to be as powerful and easy as possible.

Currently X is a step behind in that aspect. That is not an original though, almost every X editor here is willing to say that a "send to Motion" feature would be welcomed. Is it a "deal breaker" -- obviously not.

I don't see why the admission that X is missing a nice little feature is so upsetting. Ppro doesn't have the lovely color coded time code sync indicators that FCP7 has. I've asked for them many times, I complain that it doesn't have it. Why would this bother anybody - it's a missing feature, hardly the only one, and I'm happy to both acknowledge it and still work with Ppro. I've never worked with a perfect NLE, I've complained and "poked holes" in ever NLE I've worked with and many that I have not. I want them all to be better and I don't believe unconditional love is good for anything but sentient beings.

[Bill Davis]"Tony and Robin and me and quite a few others who have earned deep knowledge in X all used to enjoy "send to motion" in its traditional form - but notice how few of us who are actually fully X literate - find what I think Tim referred to as this particular "feature downgrade" to be more critical to our editing happiness than others outside the X system seem to feel it should be."

Never once did I say or imply that this one feature is more important than the overall experience of working in X, that is purely your defensiveness. Quite a few of the X editors here list "send to motion" on their requested list, right next to color coded roles and a role based mixer. Obviously the lack of these features prevents no one from doing good work with X, however their addition might make your life even better.

[Herb Sevush]"Since I had already defined "send to motion" as a two-way, or bi-directional process, this implied that there is an equivalent to a "send feature.""

That's what you get when you bring a knife (+misconception, lack of expertise etc.) to an FCP discussion.

It helps to understand what it is your "dueling" over before you enter into it, to avoid strawmen, the usual loaded questions, false causes, a slew of other logical fallacies and hearing what you want to hear as opposed to what is being argued. Because with my previous explanations I was refuting the claim that somehow the process isn't "two-way, or bi-directional", where—as everyone actually using X knows—it very much is. Nothing else.

Whereby my actual use keeps me from trying to sell anyone on the notion that "two-way" as a whole somehow hinges exclusively on the existence of a "Send to" command as opposed to being one of many possibilities for exchange.

I wasn't offering up any appeasement alternatives to "Send to", but rather pointing to why its absence isn't even close to as dramatic as you would seemingly love to make it out to be. It's called "arguing from personal incredulity". Made obvious by apparently assuming that said feature holds the exact same level of necessity that it did in legacy, which, again, it does not.

But then you have your "two-way" and "Live-Link" etc., so all's good! No idea what there is for you to be upset about.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Whereby my actual use keeps me from trying to sell anyone on the notion that "two-way" as a whole somehow hinges exclusively on the existence of a "Send to" command as opposed to being one of many possibilities for exchange."

There are many other possibilities then "Send to", all of them work well, none of them work as well for as many different types of applications. Rigging is much better than send for some things, useless for others. I'm not suggesting that you give up the unique features that X has created, merely that you add back a feature that was left behind.

Which is probably why you have stated, in this thread, that you would welcome the addition of a send feature.

[Robin S. Kurz]"I wasn't offering up any appeasement alternatives to "Send to", but rather pointing to why its absence isn't even close to as dramatic as you would seemingly love to make it out to be."

Again, I don't recall ever saying that a sending option was somehow a bad idea or that I'd somehow be disappointed if it ever shows up, which I'm sure it will. Nor am I exactly sure how you managed to extrapolate anything along those lines out of the above.

[Robin S. Kurz]"[Tony West] "I think I still may prefer adjusting it in the inspector in X first,"

That won't actually change anything in terms of what you'll need to modify in Motion once you open it. Those settings are irrelevant to it's initial state in Motion."

I know, I just mean in terms of quickly creating and adjusting these backgrounds. I won't be modifying the background in Motion once I do that in X. I will just be building on top of that with other stuff.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Aside from maybe not being able to send a clip directly from the FCP timeline, the integration is seamless. In very many ways even FAR better than what PPro and AE have (cue the subject of speed, not to mention editability), let alone what was possible in 7. But yeah... YMMV, as they say."

Surely you would acknowledge that your "aside" means that there is no compositing-oriented workflow between FCPX and Motion?

The FCPX/Motion workflow is awesome for titling, transitions, and parameter-driven effects. There's no way to seamlessly bring the entire toolset of Motion to bear from an FCPX project, though. You're limited to what you can publish to FCPX. That makes compositing and non-parametric effects work hard.

Contrasting that with the Adobe workflow, or the Media Composer/Fusion workflow, or the Autodesk workflow, which are all very nearly the opposite, the idea that one approach is "FAR better" overall is nonsensical. Which one is better for your workflow is highly dependent on what kind of work you're doing. YMMV, indeed.

I still want a better, faster, simpler way to do broadcast-legal closed captioning and subtitling for air as well as for DVD output. One that doesn't cost more than the entire hardware and software suite to employ.
Perhaps treating the caption track like part of a multicam edit? I'd imagine it as two plug-ins: one for the audio to text file transcription, and one for text placement, synchronization, and generating/embedding/reading the CEA-708-legal captions themselves.

[Walter Soyka]"your "aside" means that there is no compositing-oriented workflow between FCPX and Motion?"

Quite the loaded question. But sure there is. Use it all the time. Aside from some of the most features and functionality that I'd go to Motion for (e.g. b-spline masking) are now directly available inside of FCP. On the other hand that's also assuming that that's even what everyone with the FCP/Motion workflow even need or want to do or it is even intended to cater to, which I personally think is obviously not the case. Could that aspect be more convenient? Yeah. Will the addition of some sort of "Send to" be happily accepted? Sure! Is it somehow the all governing, make-or-break feature it's being made out to be? Nope.

[Walter Soyka]"but there's more there than meets the eye [link].)"

Wow. Now that's what I call intuitive and user-friendly. How could I think something (normally simple) like that is far better implemented with X/Motion. ;-D

[Robin S. Kurz]"Will the addition of some sort of "Send to" be happily accepted? Sure! Is it somehow the all governing, make-or-break feature it's being made out to be? Nope."

I don't think it's a make or break feature, but gosh, it would be nice for a lot of workflows.

Round-tripping and rigging are designed to solve different problems, as Jeremy and I have outlined above. While rigging is definitely a worthy feature that saves time for cases like titling and more filter-style effects work, I also appreciate the classic round-trip integration options that Adobe/Avid/Autodesk offer.

[Robin S. Kurz]"Wow. Now that's what I call intuitive and user-friendly. How could I think something (normally simple) like that is far better implemented with X/Motion. ;-D"

Robin, spare me the sarcasm and condescension.

I actually like the FCPX/Motion integration. I think it is absolutely brilliant. I have done identity systems in Motion and transitioned several projects from FCP7 over to FCPX specifically to take advantage of the publishing/rigging functionality.

Adobe's publishing implementation is clearly primitive in comparison. However, because Ae's expressions systems is so powerful, users at least have the option of extending that functionality to suit their needs. There are a number of broadcasters doing exactly that with my workflow.